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“I loved them,” she says, perched cross-legged on a sofa at a downtown Toronto hotel. “Until I married somebody that owned another team.”

But Fonda’s not in town to revive her fandom or her past betrothals. The 77-year-old actor and activist comes with a solar-fuelled fire in her belly.

“The climate change problem is the issue of our civilization. It will affect everything about our lives if we don’t do something about it,” she says.

Touching down Friday night from Los Angeles, the two-time Oscar winner is part of a parade of celebrities and distinguished guests who are putting foot to pavement in Sunday’s March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate.

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The demonstration, organized by environmental group 350.org two days before Toronto hosts the Climate Summit of the Americas, has wrangledparticipants from more than 100 organizations, from Greenpeace to Unifor, a union representing 40,000 oil and gas workers among its 300,000 members.

“I’m really amped up about the participation of the unions, because it’s a false choice that either you stay with the fossil fuel economy or you lose jobs,” Fonda says, her voice firm.

Active for nearly half a century in causes ranging from anti-war campaigns to gender equality, she insists it was Canadian author Naomi Klein’s 2014 bestseller on climate change, This Changes Everything, that jolted her out of complacency and lit her fire, as she puts it.

“It changed my life,” she says, unblinking.

Soon Fonda called up Klein, who passed on the digits of Greenpeace Canada’s executive director Joanna Kerr.

The former fitness guru, who deliberately uses her influence as a film star to “amplify” important issues, says she is “moved” and “inspired” by the resilience of many of Canada’s First Nations.

“They’re really on the front lines.”

Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a Greenpeace energy campaigner, is a rising leader in that battle.

A member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, she remembers clearly when a pipeline rupture sent more than three million litres of oil gushing through the ground about 10 kilometres from her family home in the village of Little Buffalo in 2011. It was the biggest oil spill in Alberta since the mid-1970s.

“My family is breathing in the toxins. My family is sick, nauseous. Their eyes are burning,” she says.

Small communities have often been among the first to face the brunt of environmental blunders, in places like northern Alberta and Lac-Mégantic, Que., notes Laboucan-Massimo, 33.

Now many First Nations leaders feel like "economic hostages," she says. They’re caught "between a rock and a hard place" due to the conflicting pressures of turning on the oil valve in their community to provide jobs for its members while ensuring the health and safety of their people.

“But we do have a choice. We have to make that initiative and we have to do it now,” she says.

Laboucan-Massimo has raised money to install a photovoltaic power generator at the school in Little Buffalo. “Panel by panel, we’re showing politicians what true leadership is.”

As she and Fonda sit elbow to elbow, and with Mohawk and labour leaders poised to speak side by side at Sunday’s rally, the film star’s declaration that “trust is building” between non-aboriginal and indigenous communities resonates.

Forty-five years ago Fonda herself was arrested along with dozens of indigenous protesters as they attempted to occupy a U.S. army base in Seattle.

Her sense of social justice runs even further back.

“My dad” — Henry Fonda — “was not a man who talked a lot, but he did these movies, like Grapes of Wrath, Young Mr. Lincoln, 12 Angry Men, and he had a special relationship to those kinds of characters because of their values,” she says. “They were characters who stood up for justice.”

Fonda carries that conscience with her still.

“When my time comes, I don’t want regret. And I know the regrets that I would have would not be about what I did; they’d be about what I didn’t do,” she said, referring to action on climate change.

Toronto is proof positive to Fonda that the planet is worth preserving.

“I discovered the parks and creeks and bike paths of Toronto in the 1970s, and they are unlike anywhere else. I would go (on my bike) for hours and hours and hours,” she recalls.

An indulgence every now and then never hurts, though: “Number two — the restaurants, oh the restaurants.

“I come through customs and I cross the border and I feel, I just feel right here,” she sighs. “I love Toronto and I love Canada.”

The March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate starts kicks off with a rally in front of the Ontario legislature in Queen’s Park at 1 p.m. Sunday. After speeches, demonstrators will south on University Ave., turn east on Dundas St., pivot north at Jarvis St. and wind up at Allan Gardens.

David Suzuki, Stephen Lewis, musician Joel Plaskett and First Nations advocate Ellen Gabriel are part of the ensemble set to stride in the march, expected to attract thousands.

Correction – July 7, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly suggested that Melina Laboucan-Massimo referred to First Nations communities “reaping the royalties” from oil pipelines. In fact, she did not use these words.

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